Fostering Ethics in Organizational Culture

Alankar is a senior program manager in Bangalore, India.

  Ethics   Organizational Project Management  

Ever since humans started doing business, organizations have faced various challenges: financial crises, regulatory pressures, decrease in demand, etc. These issues have a direct impact on employee decision making in their day-to-day jobs. Yet organizations rarely address how their employees should assess the ethics of their actions and incorporate ethical choices into their decisions. This can only be resolved by creating and maintaining a corporate culture with a focus on ethics.

The role of management in creating or changing organizational culture is important as it both acts as a role model for the employees and can also directly influence the behavior and culture to improve organizational performance. (Source: Belias Dimitrios, University of Thessaly, Greece)

We often hear stories about unethical (sometimes shocking) behaviors of leaders and organizations that seem intent on lying and cheating their customers/shareholders—perhaps laughing all the way to the bank. It’s demoralizing to learn that many organizations and leaders just can’t be trusted. According to the Institute of Business Ethics, U.K. organizations in the finance sector reported the most ethical lapses in 2015. And according to a Harvard Business Review study, two-thirds of respondents report regularly witnessing either minor or major ethical infractions. We can safely conclude that we…

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